GUNTHER, JOHANN CHRISTIAN Ger man poet, was born at Striegau, Lower Silesia, on April 8, He studied medicine at Wittenberg; but he was idle and dissipated and came to a complete rupture with his family. In 1717 he went to Leipzig, where he was befriended by J. B. Mencke 2 ) who recognized his genius. A recommendation from Mencke to Frederick Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, proved worse than useless, as Gunther appeared at the audience drunk. He died at Jena on March 15, 1723, when only in his 28th year. Goethe pronounces Gunther to have been a poet in the fullest sense of the term. His lyric poems reveal fine imagination, clever wit and a true ear for melody and rhythm; but dull or vulgar witticisms are not infrequently found side by side with the purest inspira tions of his genius.
Gunther's collected poems were published in four volumes (Breslau, . They are also included in vol. vi. of Tittmann's Deutsche Dichter des I ten Jahrh. (Leipzig, 1874), and vol. xxxviii. of Kursch ner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur (1883). A life of him by Siebrand appeared at Leipzig in 1738. See Hoffmann von Fallersleben, J. Ch. Gunther (Breslau, 1833) ; M. Kalbeck, Neue Beitrdge zur Biographie des Dichters C. Gunther (Breslau, 1879) ; A. Hoffmann, Deutsche Dichter im Schlesischen Gebirge (1897) and Die Wahrheit fiber Gun thers Leonore (1925).